"Before We Fall Asleep", Fiction by Muheez Olawale

Before We Fall Asleep is a lament, a poetic piece that depicts the unfair tragedies of warfare—life loss, hunger, homelessness, and destitution.

Before We Fall Asleep is a lament, a poetic piece that depicts the unfair tragedies of warfare—life loss, hunger, homelessness, and destitution. The persona succinctly expressed the harsh realities of life with staunch imageries and metaphors, likening same to Armageddon. But even so, there appears to be some desire to live life, waiting on a beacon of hope, taking all the tastes and bullets rather than walking down the cold aisle of death.

BEFORE WE FALL ASLEEP 

All we do is run. We find a new way of living amidst chaos and rubbles.

The bombs land in Onitsha just as we lay our beds for night rest. We scurry out of our homes with the biggest yet smallest luggage we can bear — our grimy body, our trembling soul, and our harrowing grief. Our lives surrender to flying shrapnel and drown in debris, as they urge us to speed up. Not from death, but from the shadows of life itself.

We flood the streets like fear scourges the heart after a nightmare. Our footsteps remain on the fire-glazed paths. Our symphony of wailing outbursts still echo in the crumbling walls that wave us goodbye.

We stumble against rocks as we run into the forest for shelter. We hope perhaps, the trees shall remember their runaway children and welcome us with open arms.

But tragedy is a grievous ocean pulling smiles into its darkest depths. The trees soon have neither food nor closure for us. The branches fall off in protest; no pillows to properly our heads tonight. Bullets seek our fleeing hearts. Agonies palpate our footprints.

We quake in hunger and thirst. Lost for long, the forest see us as nothing but animals too. We feast on plants and rodents. Then the forest begins to turn us away. It fears to suffer the same fate that we suffer.

We once knew our name. Long before we roll down the hill into a limbo right in the heart of our fatherland. Long before our bruised lips ramble our yearn for life. Now, we are lost somewhere between the terra and firma of crises and cries.

We have tasted bullets. We know what it feels like to see a loved one blowing into a thousand pieces, their hearts falling into your embrace, their goodbyes splatting in the dust.

We take a bath in a stagnant, green pool housing overfed flies. No one dares to dive into the drop of water. We fear the splash. We abhor the toom sound because it sounds like everything we run from. Boom. Doom. Gloom.

Tonight, we sit round a dying fire, seeking more warmth in our togetherness than the flame. We share wistful tales in whispers, scared of awaking the departed souls clutching to our ephemeral footsteps, careful not to gloat in front of trees thinning out of distress.

A woman sobs. Armageddon is here. After eleven years of barrenness in her husband’s home, stumbling through the maze of contempt and disgust, she found a reason to rejoice. She birthed a baby. On the night of the child’s christening, the rebel leader was declared wanted on the radio. Her baby was barely a month old when the bombs arrived. She lost her husband, but took her baby with her. Tonight, months into our running, we share this woman’s grief. Her child is dinner. Everyone watches our first meal in weeks jerk into death in the yellow flames.

The old man with one arm and limping legs tosses the portrait of a young man into the fire. He had always kept it in his breast pocket — close to his heart. The young man is his son who was forcefully conscripted to the rebel army. The old man had spent his whole life savings to send his son to study medicine in the white man’s land, only for the boy to return and become an object of war. We guess, tonight, the old man is letting go of grief before it eats deep into his heart like a cankerous worm. He knows when our belly runs dry in the coming weeks, he will be our dinner, since he was the least mobile. He would reside in us forever, a martyr, a memory.

And before we fall asleep tonight, we cluster round the squealing radio. While the soft glow of the dying flames lick our expectant faces, we pray that tonight’s news bags a heap of smiles. Oh Lord, we do not want wars. Fill our bellies with good food instead of grudge and rage. Fill our mouths with kisses, and not hisses. Put in our eyes glitters, and not sparks. Because when everything starts falling down, even the fastest man won’t escape the murderous thud.

So we lay our heads on the cold earth and the colder pebbles. We count the stars in the sky, and worry if the moon hears our laments. We close our eyes, and lose ourselves in the wind, and let the ghoulish nightmares open the passageway to yesterday. Scarred by life in the absence of death. So we surrender to life itself before death appears, because after all this time, it still works.

Writer

Muheez Olawale writes poetry and prose from Lagos, Nigeria. He was the first runner-up, A.S. Abugi National Prize for Short Story. He has works published or forthcoming in The Hooghly, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari, Afrocritik, African Writer, Akpata Mag, The Flare, and elsewhere.